The Autumn Prince

52. Knight's Gambit

Katherine began the week with a vigorous mood that started in her bed and ended with acrobatic sex in the shower. The risk of getting caught seemed only to heighten her passion and I let her enthusiasm carry me away. She made it easy to forget about ifs and maybes. She knew how she looked and had always liked being seen, but it had gradually taken on a new dynamic and sex was quickly becoming, at least in part, a performance. She was adept enough to keep it from diluting either the passion or the romance, and it would be foolish for me to deny her appeal, but I also wondered if she secretly hoped we'd be caught in the act.

"That was new," I said, buttoning my jeans back in her room. I thought I was being ironic because the entire concept of a sexual relationship was still new to me. We had returned to her cottage to get dressed, but Katherine sat brazenly at her desk wearing only a pair of pink, lace panties, brushing out her hair.

"It was, wasn't it?" she replied simply. I didn't understand how, after what we'd just done, she could still pull off that innocent smile, "It was also fun. We should do it more often."

"Less fun if Rachel or Becca decided to get an early breakfast."

She giggled, "Would it? I'd pay to see Becca's expression." I suddenly felt justified in my suspicions.

"I thought you weren't going to pick on her anymore."

"Tell me it wouldn't be hysterical and I'll take it back," she continued calmly.

I couldn't without lying, so I grabbed my shirt and changed the subject. "Everything's packed?"

"More or less."

"You still have a little time."

"I know, dear, we're supposed to wait for Finn." she rolled her eyes at me in the mirror, "I might be addicted to your affection, but I'm not a mindless sex zombie."

"Maybe not mindless."

She just smiled serenely in reply. Bantering with her had lost a lot of its edge, and I missed it. She took her bra from where it hung on the back of her chair and finally put it on. "I wonder if real nymphs crave sex, or if we just appropriated that word."

"I doubt it. Meg is technically a nymph."

Katherine's eyebrows lifted in surprise, "I thought she was a hag?"

"Hags are water nymphs," I shrugged, reaching down to tie my shoes, "it's complicated. Nymphs are a subclass of elementals, hags are a kind of nymph."

"You've been studying?"

"I don't have to, Becca told me. I didn't even ask, she just mentioned it in passing. Brownies are also lares, Julian is a forest troll, and Juhan is something called a Leshy."

"Juhan's a forest god."

"Really."

"He told me so himself."

"He didn't seem very godlike when I met him."

Katherine stood and slipped into a baggy sweater. "Apparently, his people used to have a connection to the druids because of their healing powers. After Mab conscripted them, she used them to get humans to worship the Fae."

"Now who's the encyclopedia?" I said and pulled her into my arms.

"He talked the whole time he was treating me, giving me something to focus on besides the pain. He had a great bedside manner."

"Sounds to me like you have a crush on your doctor."

"Well," she replied, pulling back slightly, "he is a doctor. And a forest god too, so there's that. And he got to see me naked before you did."